Mark #54 Feb/Mar 2015

Usurpation is rampant in neutral Switzerland, where industrial zones left vacant by an increasingly service-oriented economy now host large-scale urban redevelopments.

Two stories in Mark #54 analyse this trend specifically among universities. Katharina Marchal writes on EM2N’s Toni-Areal district in Zurich, Juliette Soulez on a collaborative project for the Academy of Art and Design in Basel.

Cape Verde becomes the stage for an unintentionally elegiac cover story. OTO’s headquarters for Fogo Island Natural Park, a carefully planned synthesis of delicate political, social, and environmental concerns, was decimated along with its surrounding community this past November by the island’s worst volcanic eruption in 60 years. Ana Martins traces the project’s tragic history from its inception to the disaster’s aftermath.

Spanish firm SelgasCano and a group of MIT architecture students similarly confront harsh natural conditions in constructing an education and vaccination pavilion for a remote Kenyan village. In Katowice, Poland, atelier KWK Promes attempt to reconcile the suburban, single-family residence with nature in the Living-Garden House. A trio of metro stations in Barcelona designed by local firm Garcés De Seta Bonet bare their raw engineering and silently await the completion of the line.

We converse with – among others – Belgian artist Xavier Delory about his fictional, absurdist architecture via altered photography. Harvard Graduate School of Design professor Rahul Mehrotra closes with observations on literary culture in India and the intersection between digitalisation and democratisation.

Katharina Marchal delineates Swiss firm EM2N’s conversion of a Zurich milk-processing factory into two universities, apartments, and a museum.

In Juliette Soulez’s companion piece, a group of Swiss ateliers transform the Dreispitz industrial zone into a ‘Campus of the Arts’ for the Academy of Art and Design Basel.

Long Section:

Lisbon-based OTO’s Fogo Natural Park Headquarters lies in ruins after the eruption of the island’s Pico do Fogo volcano.

The Cricoteka Centre in Cracow, Poland, a collaborative effort between local practices nsMoondstudio and Wizja, commemorates the life of Tadeusz Kantor on the Vistula waterfront.

Spanish firm SelgasCano and a group of 12 MIT architecture students discover the practical limitations of honest materials in constructing a health and education pavilion for the nomadic Turkana people.